Said I Need It in the Worst Way, So Run Wild
by JannP
Summary: She never could have imagined the effect of crossing the city's northern border with a real future spread out endlessly before them but now that she's witnessing it first-hand, she likes it. Olicity's summer-plus between s3 and s4 in discontinuous one-shots from different POVs.
1. I need it in the worst way

**A/N: I know this concept has been done and redone and probably done better. I haven't actually read any of them because I had this idea before I caught up on the series and I didn't want to be derivative, so if anyone is off put that I'm doing this or feel like I've somehow plagiarized, that isn't my intent and please message me nicely and we can talk it out. Anyway, this will be the first of a few scattered one-shots of Olicity's five months between 3X23 and 4X01, when they were out of Star(ling.) The thoughts I have now fit with canon, but that might change. Please let me know how I'm doing and thank you for reading if you do!**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. Title and inspo from 'Follow Me Down' by Lydia.**

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 **Said I Need It In the Worst Way (So Run Wild)**

Felicity Smoak is a believer, or at the very least someone who keeps an open mind. She stays susceptible to possibility. As they drive the winding route up the coast from Starling City to wherever Oliver's dreams are taking them, she's surprised by two things. The first is she doesn't have much to say. For once, she's contented into silence. She knows they have so many things to talk about, but now they also have the luxury of time to discuss freely and at will—and she doesn't want to right now. Instead, she's focusing all her energy on the incredible man next to her and the feel of his sturdy forearm under her fingertips, solid and sure as he rests his hand on the gearshift.

The second surprise is how wonderful it is to be with him when he isn't brooding or lost to dark thoughts and hateful memories. A happy Oliver is addictively warm and enticing. The real surprise is he hasn't reverted at all and he's practically glowing, centered and quiet in a tranquil way she's never seen. He's open, wide open and vulnerable just for her. Part of her wants to keep him away if this is how he is when he isn't in Starling City. Time will tell, but she thinks it just might be. It's _him_ with all the stress and self-doubt stripped away.

She never could have imagined the effect of crossing the city's northern border with a real future spread out endlessly before them but now that she's witnessing it first-hand, she likes it.

"What are you looking at?" He finally asks, his low and amused voice rough from disuse. He's smiling a little as he flicks a casual glance her way. The sun has long since set but he still radiates its pleasantries and she slips her hand up his arm then rests her head on his hard biceps muscle. He feels just as warm as he looks.

"Are we there yet?" She blurts out in an impatient sigh. There's no deal urgency to it because as much as she wants him, she likes him this way, too.

The laugh that bubbles out of him is new and carefree and it goes straight through her. Like he needed one more way to turn her on. Sometimes, life likes to remind her how unfair it can be.

"No, we still have about another hour," he says once he stops chuckling. "Are you in a hurry?"

She turns her head a little and her kiss lands on his t-shirt. She's sure she'll be able to trace the press of fuchsia color from her lips on the grey cotton later. He's so warm and smells like _him_ —leather and spice and something else she's never been able to place. The smell is almost as addictive as his warmth. She doesn't answer him with words (still a surprise) and gives him a contented little hum instead.

He turns his head, leaving his eyes on the road, and kisses the top of her head.

"Me, too," he says, a spark of something else in his content voice. As sweet as it is to be driving away together, literally leaving all their responsibilities and problems behind, the thought of being able to spend the night together for the first time with an actual tomorrow to follow… well, let's just say she's a little impatient for it to happen.

"I've been thinking," she manages.

"You usually are," he teases right back. She would roll her eyes if she wanted to take them off the profile of his close-lipped smile. He has a dent in his cheek, a dimple she's never seen until now because his smiles have somehow never reached that far into his cheek in the time she's known him. She wants to see that thing for every second it's there because she's earned it. They both have.

In spite of what she's pieced together and been allowed to see as he's come to trust her, she wonders. She wonders about the details of him and she thinks, for the first time, he just might tell her some of them if she asks. They did this completely backwards, falling in love first and asking questions later, but she wants to ask the questions and get to know him, this him, and she wants to start now. At least there's something they can start while he's driving.

She smiles right back. "We don't know each other in all those stupid little ways true intimacy is made of. We should fix that."

"We should," he agrees in that vaguely formal way he always has. It might be the product of his upbringing. He's still smiling. His cheek is still denting. She's still trying to get comfortable and not throw herself at him shamelessly. "What do you want to know about me?"

She could go straight for something heavy. There's so much about the time he was away she doesn't know, so many thoughts he keeps to himself and instincts he fights. She wants to know those things, wants to take the weight of them as much as he'll let her. She's tried in bits in a pieces, to tell him he can share the load or remind him he isn't alone, but now isn't the time for hard and heavy. She definitely doesn't want to wreck the blissful thing they have going.

"Do you have any tattoos I haven't seen?" She goes with instead. It's the first thing that escapes her mouth, and for once not the worst thing she could have asked.

She was pretty thorough with her mouth in Nanda Parbat. The chances he says yes are actually pretty slim.

"No," he says thoughtfully. "Well, maybe. It depends on what you consider a tattoo. There's a… new mark. From a branding iron, basically."

She hears words he doesn't speak, layered into his still-casual tone. Ra's al Guhl marked him as a member of the League. With fire. On his skin. How is he so at ease with that? She grits her teeth a little at the thought.

"Stop it," he says. His voice isn't really heavy or demanding in spite of the nature of his words. Still, he knows what she's doing and he doesn't want it to have any purchase in their perfect moment. "It's okay. It's over. Do you have any tattoos I haven't seen?" He redirects, flipping his hand off its resting spot on the gearshift and onto her leg so he can touch her. There's no way he can reach the tattoo on her hip with the way she's sitting, but she feels the attempt all the same. Damn him.

He spent a good ten minutes licking and sucking her three tattoos when he got her naked, even as he claimed his surprise that she had any because of her open hatred of all things needled. The memory diffuses her anger and helplessness against what he's so recently put himself through and has her shifting impatiently in her seat as his innocent touch instantly stirs a heat low in her belly.

"Nope, I think you found them all," she says. "Not that you should take my word for it. You're free to pull the car over and search _right now_."

"Do you regret getting any of them?" He asks, laughing as he otherwise bypasses her statement.

"I think it was supposed to be my turn to ask a question." She tries to keep her voice light but it only sort of works because his fingers are stroking the hemline of her skirt on her thigh. "Sneaky."

"Not the worst I've been called this week," he bounces back. It makes her laugh even though it shouldn't. It's a terrible joke for at least four reasons. "You should answer though."

"Fine, but I'm asking you three in a row," she barters. "I would probably rethink the one on my side, but not enough to get it removed. I was young and in love and a complete idiot and no one actually wants binary on their ribs, you know?"

"Is that what it is?" He asks, pulling a face as he looks at her. "What does it say?"

"It says I have two more questions before I'm answering either of those," she replies immediately.

He laughs. "Wow. Binary is really concise then because that sounds like a paragraph and I know for a fact that tattoo is tiny."

It's true. She knows that entire tattoo of hers fits under one swipe of his tongue and the memory makes her shiver. His fingertips are also not getting any lower. Quite the opposite.

"Do you have a middle name?" She asks, trying to focus on anything but the desperation building inside her to take him and somehow make him hers again. Or make him _more_ hers? Does it work like that?

It's like he forgets he's driving and he looks at her in surprise. "You don't know my middle name?"

"I… Should I?" She asks. For as detail oriented as she can be, she somehow missed this one. She really has tried not to pry into his details as much as possible, though. She wants him to tell her those details himself and has only done it when strictly necessary to help him in some backdoor way he didn't know she was attempting. His middle name never seemed that important.

"Jonas," is all he says. He settles back in and focuses on the road. He actually has to correct the course of the car a little when he remembers he's moving forward down a winding highway at about 80 miles per hour and should probably be looking that way, too. "My mother's father's name. He died just before I was born and she always told me she wanted to honor him." There's something gentle in his voice. She thinks maybe he likes having these kinds of innocuous things to share. She isn't asking hard questions, like why he speaks Russian or where he got the mob tattoo. Middle names and funny anecdotes don't hurt. Nothing can hurt them right now because they won't let it.

"Right, Jonas Dearden," she replies immediately, though, because of course she knows _some_ things. She wouldn't be her if she didn't. "He was a helicopter pilot, right?"

"Yes," Oliver confirms, the amusement clear as day in his voice. "That's almost all I know about him though. You probably know better than I do." He smiles at her. "And that's three. My turn."

She laughs a little at his innocent tone. It's such a good look on him, and may be one of her new favorite sounds. He's undeniably a man, a brooding and solemn one most of the time. She's never actually seen him quite like this, this light-hearted. She wonders if he was like this before. She isn't going to ask. She is going to slide her hand over his thigh.

"How are you real?" He asks, breathless.

"That question doesn't have an answer," she teases. "But if you want to take an unscheduled stop in Coast City, you can verify." She bites her lip and moves her hand a little higher.

He groans, but it's like he's straddling the line between turned on and being responsible and sticking to some sort of itinerary – which is ridiculous on this particular trip. "I hate Coast City."

"Why?"

For just a split second, she feels bad for hoping he won't catch on. It's not her turn to ask a question. She's not usually the girl to feel someone up in the name of distraction, but she's not totally above an exception in this case and the fact remains he's not that easy to distract. It makes her feel like she's doing something right. He's already pulling off the highway as her charms work.

"Just… we're not going to a bar and we're definitely not getting any Scotch here, okay? And if you see Amanda Waller, run away. Trust me."

Really, it prompts more questions than it answered. Now she knows he was here at some point and somehow the evil ARGUS manager was involved. She already knew he didn't _stay_ on the island but…

She forces her train of thought to stop chugging. This whole thing is about priorities. He's hers, and she's his.

She rests her chin against his arm again. "I do."


	2. I'll take the monsters

**A/N: Thank you for the reviews/favorites/follows. It makes me think I might not be as bad at this as I feared. Please let me know what you think! Thank you for reading, and even more if you review.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow. Last night's episode would've been very different if I did. Oh well. This chapter is titled from and inspired by the song 'Going Down' by The Cinema.**

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 **Part Two | _I'll take the monsters if you take my demons_**

She watches him sleep, amazed to learn that when he's really comfortable, content in their safety and also not trying to accommodate a healing injury, he sleeps like a rock and he does it mostly on his stomach. He pulls his hands under his warm body and turns his head toward her and then he doesn't snore and only moves by taking deep, even breaths. It's hypnotic to watch and she falls asleep to the metronome of his steady breathing almost every night. When she doesn't, it's because they fall asleep attached to or tangled in one another. Those nights are awesome, too.

She's loved every moment of the last couple days, whether they're curled up in whatever hotel they've stopped at for the night or driving through the next day. The only thing he's mentioned so far, besides the peace freedom brings, is how he wants to get over his hatred of boats. She thinks his dislike (his word, not hers, because she's long since discovered his way of downplaying even the most rational of his own fears) of boats is justified and would be totally fine not exploring the cruise option on her bucket list. But he knows the item is there and that's sort of that. He wants her to do everything she wants to do—so it's what they're doing and it's up first. They're actually driving all the way to Alaska and setting sail from there, which is insane. It was also his idea. She doesn't know the reasoning behind it, really, but he was so excited about it and she can fully admit she's one-hundred percent caught up in him so she's excited about it too. Even if it's insane. The odds are better this won't kill them than the average weeknight back in Starling, though, so she's going with it.

Anyway, as she's watching him sleep like he's a little kid, it occurs to her that a good portion of this is happening because he probably doesn't have anywhere to go. A bid for freedom can easily disguise a lack of direction. He doesn't exactly have a home these days, which hadn't occurred to her before. That thought makes her incredibly sad. Before they left, she took a full day to make arrangements, which she did happily, but it was still necessary. She had to give her landlord notice. She had to resign from Palmer. She had to make sure everything for Digg, Thea, and Laurel would back up and update and could be remotely accessed on her in an emergency. Just because she's leaving for the foreseeable future doesn't mean she wants to leave them in a precarious spot. She taught Digg the basics and ignored his sideways glances. That was actually the biggest portion of her day to prepare, dodging his concern and his quiet 'be sure before you do this.'

Oliver gave Thea a hug and rented a car. Or secured a car. Or stole a car. She doesn't know where the Porsche came from, besides somewhere beyond his current tax bracket. Anyway. He didn't have to say anything to anyone. He cut all his ties before.

In hindsight, he had steadily come undone over the course of the previous couple years. The falling out with Thea that led to them losing almost everything financially, his mother being killed, his failure to get Queen Consolidated back more than once… it slowly became just him in Nanda Parbat. Whatever little things were left then, he traded away to get into bed with the enemy. Even though she told him how she felt and they shared a night, she'd also stood in front of him and watched him try to seem even a little surprised when she told him she didn't want him to love her. He'd lost everyone and everything, and it wasn't even at the hands of _one_ madman, but three. Three psychopaths, seven years, and an island had gotten him to the point where he made deals with Merlyn and Ra's al Ghul. Someone had hurt Thea, all he had left, and had pushed him into those impossible positions with a devastating and final blow. She isn't sure which of them is the actual Satan, but it has to be one of them. Maybe there are two Satans. It isn't like he was a victim in all of it; he made mistakes and bad decisions, but he paid steep prices for them all. Those were just the _visible_ prices, too. Those didn't include whatever internal consequences he inflicted along the way.

Regardless, Oliver never planned to be here with her now because he never planned to get this far.

She traces her finger over the tattoo on his back, the one closest to her, focusing on the fuzzy lines of it to blink away the sudden onslaught of tears. They've been very careful to keep things light. Though a few details have snuck in, because the details will always be there and part of them just as much as the ability to keep things light will be, there haven't been tears. There haven't been acknowledgments of how lucky they are to have made it this far. Maybe because it's the middle of the night or maybe because she had three glasses of wine with dinner instead of one, she can't totally fight off the emotion. She sniffles and that's what actually causes him to stir. His slight movement stills her hand and she squeezes her eyes closed.

"Hey," he says. It takes him a minute to realize she's crying and his voice loses some of its sleepiness. He doesn't move, though, and some of his words are muffled by the pillow. " _Hey_. Felicity. What's wrong?"

"I don't know what this tattoo is," she says breathlessly. It's avoiding the subject or approaching it from the side at most. There's no elegant way to point out he's got nothing or no reason to fight and live and love and she thinks it's incredible he did it anyway. She knows she's smart, knows she's capable in general, but she had no idea she was enough to be his reason, even as she said the words and gave the push.

He looks at her the way he has probably hundreds of times – like he has no idea what she's actually thinking because she's never quite what he's expecting and she's always somehow more. He was really, really asleep and this is even more disorienting than just waking up. All he can do is blink.

"Tattoos are reminders," she said, her voice still shaky and her touch still light. "Mine are. That's the only reason I could bear to get them, because they reminded me of something I thought would be good to remember but…"

One of his hands emerges from the warm cocoon he'd created, gentle but calloused fingertips tracing along her soft tanktop above the small tattoo on her side, the one they'd talked about. He didn't have to look to find it. They're both still part way covered and he manages to find it with ease. More often than not, when it's come to explaining, the best he'll offer is that it's complicated. He wants to stop doing that, but he doesn't really know how to tell these stories. It's a big part of the reason he never has. There are big reasons he wants to do it now with her, too, before his mind can wake up and tell him all the reasons it's a bad idea. Really, though, she's seen him at his worst already. If she was going to bail, she would've already. She's had plenty of chances and not only has she not left, she's stayed or returned every time. Plus she's here with him now. They've literally run away together. He can put all this behind him, but not if he keeps it all bottled up and doesn't make her an honest-to-God partner.

"Shado," he manages. He shifts a little, staying on his stomach with his head on his pillow, but he pulls on the pillow and tucks his hands under it, pulling it taut enough his face doesn't get lost in it. "I wasn't alone on the island. You know about Slade and Sara. It was me and Slade working together to try to get off the island and it just… it was a massive failure," he says on a choked laugh that's anything but joyful. "We ended up with Shado when it was all said and done and she was a breath of fresh air."

"She. Shado is a she. Of course," Felicity interjects with a watery laugh.

"Yeah," he said. "Then there was Sara and Ivo and… Ivo…" he swallows hard. He lets out a breath, takes a moment to sort through the memories he has and what's relevant to Felicity's question. As he looks over her damp face, right in front of him and listening intently to this horrible story, he finds a little strength. This is all the past and it's all led him to here and now with her. Though there are parts he'd trade – and this story is one of them – there's no way to know what kind of damage it would do. He's where he is because of the experiences he's had. Everything is safe and as okay as it's going to be.

Her fingers on his skin bring him back to here and now in the best way.

"Ivo trapped us. He had Sara and Shado with a gun to their heads and he told me to choose. When I glanced at Sara, he killed Shado." Felicity lays her hand flat on his back and she lets her breath out in a rush. This is probably more than she bargained for at oh-dark-thirty when she asked him about this. He doesn't really have humorous anecdotes or light-hearted quips from those five years. "Shado had been teaching me to fight, teaching me Chinese," he says and gives a soft smile when Felicity does because he knows she'd wondered about that, too. He licks his lips. "Among _other things_. Slade loved her, too, but I didn't know until after I'd already been with her. He had me tattooed when I was his prisoner, after the tattoo Shado had on her shoulder blade as well."

" _Had_ you tattooed. You didn't choose it?" Her hand feels heavy on him, even though her hands really aren't that heavy. They are capable of big things, but they're just not that _big_.

"No," he admits.

"Well that sucks," she says. "Do you think it hurts worse when you tense up? I've heard that's a thing and I've kind of always wondered. I mean, mine didn't feel great, especially the one over my ribs, but…"

"I don't know," he answers, even though it was a babbling question.

"You have other tattoos," she points out, clearly glad to be out of the miserable woods for at least a second. "I might not be able to reach them, but I know you know they're there."

He actually laughs a little. "Stories for another time," he says. "Those weren't exactly by choice either, though."

"Another time." It's an agreement, a source of wonder, and breathless. Her hand wanders over his back, the landscape of strong muscles and patchwork of scars. Some of them she just knows are there, some of them are raised a little more so she can feel them.

He knows where she's headed. She's reaching across his back for the raised mark of the League. She isn't going to be able to reach that far because she's little and, though her arms can hold him, they aren't all that long. He shivers under her touch anyway and she pulls her hand up, closing her mouth and swallowing whatever else she was going to say. He has no idea what it was, but it was definitely something. She's almost always about to say something.

"Your fingers are cold," he says in response. She moves a little closer to him and he relaxes a little. That's saying something because he wasn't particularly tense before.

"No, you're just hot," she says. As he chuckles. "That's not what I-" she cuts herself off with a grin. "I don't have to apologize for being inappropriate anymore. You _are_ hot. All the time."

His chuckle becomes a laugh, an honest to God laugh because he loves her and he can say so now and it doesn't hurt. And more importantly, he doesn't have to say it every time because she _knows_.

His laugh warms her, too. It's so light and free and it doesn't matter if it's the middle of the night, if they're got knows where, or if they just talked about what she hopes is one of the worst things that happened to him. When he's laughing, no part of her is cold.

She kisses her way over his shoulder, up to his neck and his mouth, and ignores the tattoo she'd started asking about. It's easy to ignore when it, and the things it symbolizes, aren't standing in their way.

Not anymore.


End file.
